


Still The Shapes Fill My Head

by pyrimidine



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-23 11:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrimidine/pseuds/pyrimidine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU where they're inexplicably cops, but that has very little to do with anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still The Shapes Fill My Head

Ray cut out the hard drugs after one night in July, when he apparently got coked out of his mind while wearing only his socks and his holster and somehow ended up shooting himself in the foot. The rumors around the office are varied -- some say that Brad showed up, punched him in the shot-up foot, and said, "Remember how this feels, because it's going to be a hell of a lot worse if you start with this shit again," before driving him to the hospital. Some say that _Brad_ was the one who shot Ray's foot. Some say that Brad actually completely shot his foot _off_ , and that's why Ray never wears shorts. Because he has a prosthetic foot.

Sometimes Brad wants to say, fuck it, quit his job, and move somewhere far far away from all the whiskey-tango fuckheads and retards that he works, lives, and otherwise deals with every single day. Preferably, he'd move into a cabin on top of a mountain that's on top of a mountain range.

But Ray would find him anyway, because he probably inserted a tracking chip into Brad's shoulder or something. Also, he's a lot more cognizant now that the only drugs he indulges in are those of the shady but not completely illegal variety. Mostly schedule 3 or lower, which is basically like candy to him.

Tonight, he's already swallowing a few before they even pull out of the parking lot. When he sees Brad eyeing him, he brags, "I have a natural tolerance for it. I think my mom used to pop a bunch of stuff when she was pregnant with me."

"I don't even know what to say to that, Ray. Congratulations, you were retarded even in the womb."

In response, Ray yells out the window: "Hey, I'm trying to fucking drive here!"

Pedestrians are landing awkwardly on top of newspaper vendors and bike racks in their haste to not get run over. Brad rubs his eyes. "Jesus Christ, this isn't a movie. Don't make Fick revoke your license again, because I hate driving."

Ray just grumbles something. A couple blocks later, an asshole kid decides to cut across four lanes of traffic to get into the left-hand turn lane. Ray pulls up beside him so that both he and Brad can stare him down. The kid stares back, unblinking. There's really no reason for him to act otherwise, since Brad and Ray are off-duty, squeezed in to Ray's tiny 1991 Pontiac. Brad's knees can pretty much double as a chin-rest.

"These assholes, man." Ray smacks his gum in distaste. "The only way to scare someone nowadays is to wave my fucking gun around. Used to be that the sound of sirens made anyone shit their pants. I miss the glory days."

"I thought I told you to stop watching cop movies," Brad says. "Especially _Bad Boys_."

"How the fuck am I not gonna watch _Bad Boys_ , Brad? That's like asking me to stop whacking it. Jesus Christ, it's like you don't know me at all."

The light changes. "To protect and to serve," Brad says wryly. He shoots a two-fingered salute at the kid, who flips him off in response.

"Want me to shoot him?" Ray asks sweetly.

"Not today, Ray," Brad answers, and adds, "But thanks," as an afterthought.

 

*

 

The bar is some dive-y bar in the shitty part of town, but they have tallboys for three bucks and they never run out of bourbon, which is more than Brad can say for half the other bars he's been to. By the time he and Ray get there, Poke and Mike Wynn are already playing pool along with a few other people, but those two are the only ones who are ever in the game.

Walt is sitting alone at a table a few feet away. He half-waves them over, as if they don't sit at the same fucking table at the same fucking bar every single Friday. There's only one pint on the table and Walt looks calm and bright-eyed as usual, but Brad knows from experience that it's all part of the same sham as the baby-face and the shy smile. Walt's ritual is to come in and knock down a few tequila shots right away before settling in for the night.

They order drinks and sit down across from Walt, slumping back and settling into Happy Hour. Brad takes a swig from his bourbon and just holds the liquid in his mouth for a few seconds before swallowing it down. Then the rest of his drink gets splashed out of the glass when Ray clinks his beer bottle against it way too hard.

"Friday, motherfucker!" Ray crows. He half-heartedly tries to wipe up the mess on Brad's hand with his bottle. With Ray, it's always pretty much only the effort that counts.

Eventually they start shooting the shit. Poke comes around and they try their best not to talk about work, and then Christeson buys them all a round of cosmos as a stupid joke, except it's not so much a joke because Ray finishes them all. Even Nate comes through and has a beer before heading back to his night of paperwork. He seems reluctant to leave but rolls his eyes and ducks out after they all blow him kisses.

By the time Ray points his beer at Trombley, he's lurching and sleepy-eyed but still manages to shake the bottle in Trombley's general direction. "What's the -- what crawled up his ass and died this week?" he manages to get out. Trombley's sitting on a stool set apart from most of the other guys, just bouncing the thick end of the pool cue against the floor and scowling.

"His case report got shit on," Walt says, hiding his smile behind his drink. "Again."

"And they're going to keep getting shit on unless he changes his vocabulary and stops using words like 'annihilated' and 'utterly destroyed'," Brad interjects boredly.

"Maybe he just doesn't like other words. Like, I don't like the word 'moist'," Walt offers.

"Dude, that's so 15-year-old girl trying to act like a squeamish virgin when she's had a cock shoved into her fucking ear," Ray practically yells in disgust. "' _Moist_ '? Are you kidding me?"

"Well, what's worse than 'moist', then?" Walt challenges.

Ray waves him off. "Brad, take this one."

"Vaginal flora," Brad says slowly. He taps his fingers over the label on his beer bottle with each syllable.

"Game over," Ray declares. "Now beer me a whiskey and shots."

"I hate it when you guys get all married couple on me," Walt drawls.

Ray hooks his arm through Brad's and nuzzles his shoulder. "But I need hubby here to bring home the bacon and support my Home Shopping Network addiction. Also, he fucks me six ways from Sunday, which is a plus in anybody's book."

Walt nods at Ray, who is now acting like some wild animal and rubbing his face against Brad's shoulder like it's a tree trunk. "How do you even do it?"

Brad just shrugs. "I drink a lot," he says, which probably means he's already drunk at this moment.

"I just go balls out and it surprises him into liking me," Ray answers for Brad, with surprising clarity considering the number of empty glasses on the table.

"You think that strategy would work on that girl?" Walt laughs. He tips his drink toward the bar at a tall blonde chick. She's at the bar almost every Friday when they are, and she and Walt have basically been eyefucking for weeks.

Brad raises his eyebrows. "Grow some testicles, Walt," is all he says, but he can't help smiling when Walt gulps down the rest of his drink, slams the glass onto the table, and slides out of the booth. Half the time, he comes right back. The other half, he just ducks into the bathroom.

Ray blows a few raspberries against Brad's shoulder, then just slumps against it, apparently taking a nap. When Poke catches Brad's eye, he makes a, "What the fuck?" face, and then grins. Still, Brad doesn't move. It almost feels nice, because Ray always seems to run a little hot. Brad's got alcohol warming his stomach and Ray warming his arm, and even though one of those things is a trigger-happy asshole with a penchant for stimulants, it's still kind of nice.

 

*

 

By the time they leave the bar, flag down a cab, and arrive at Ray's place, Ray's motor skills have shut down for the evening. He flubs for the door handle about four times before practically tipping out of the car. Brad doesn't pay him any attention as he gives the cabbie the last of the bills in his wallet. When he climbs out of the cab, Ray is falling all over himself like a complete retard, as opposed to the only partial retardation he exhibits when sober.

As usual, there's no other way around it -- Brad barely has any qualms as he crouches down a bit and swings Ray into a fireman's hold, with Ray folded in half and draped over Brad's shoulder.

"I don't want to take the stairs, man," Ray complains, but casually, as if this happens every week. Which it does. Brad can feel his voice vibrating against his back, in the same place as always. "I'm pretty sure there's a homeless dude living in the stairwell because it smells like rotten piss in there."

"Or it could be that you took a piss in there last Saturday night. Remember?" Brad grunts. He unlocks the front door to the building, makes no effort to stop Ray's head from banging against the glass panes, and walks toward the elevators.

"Still. Rotten piss, man."

Ray stretches his foot into a point worthy of a male ballerina and manages to hit the 'up' button, purely by chance. His ribs are kind of digging into Brad's shoulder, which is bad positioning on Brad's part. He's about to just drop Ray onto the floor when the elevator doors open. Some chick's already in there, stuffing her car keys into her bag. When Brad silently steps in, she looks wary, curious, and interested all at once.

"Fetal alcohol poisoning," Brad explains. "The effects last until adulthood."

The rest of the ride is silent. He gets off at the fourth floor and walks all the way down to the only door without a shiny gold number nailed onto it.

Ray's place is weird. At first glance, it looks like a grad student, a recent divorcee, and a 12-year-old kid are sharing a living space. There are piles of papers everywhere and dishes coated with dried pasta sauce in the sink; the glass door to the entertainment system is always gaping open, throwing up X-Box controllers and AV cables and _MXC_ and porn DVDs. Chinese and Thai takeout boxes, mugs with fermenting beer, random pill bottles, and Dunkin Donuts coffee cups fill up every available surface. Stray cigarettes peek out from under the coffee table and out of the medicine cabinet. Brad even found one in the dishwasher once.

Then there's the corner that's full of plants, which are healthy and green. The bookshelf with all kinds of philosophical volumes and shit like _Moby Dick_. Ray had claimed that it was one of his many missions in life to read every single novel with the word 'dick' on the cover, and if that included classics like Charles Dickinson and Philip K. Dick, then that was just the cross he had to bear. He has about nine pairs of reading glasses that he leaves all around the apartment. And contrary to Brad's instincts, which had initially led him to believe that Ray's sheets were a disgusting, hardened mass of bodily fluids, the bedroom was relatively clean and, weirdly enough, always smelled like Tide.

Brad walks in and actually does dump Ray down this time. It's a pretty careless move, but he lands on his feet anyway, right on top of an empty pizza box. He's like a fucking cat.

As Ray stumbles into the bathroom, Brad heads out to the balcony and stares at the view of the skyline, the white lights of the financial buildings, the blinking red and blue of the liquor stores. To his left are two Folgers cans overflowing with cigarette butts. "Hate to break it to you, but I think you have a habit," Brad calls over his shoulder.

"Blah bloo blee bloo," Ray says in a high-pitched voice, yet still manages to imitate Brad's inflections. "Blee bloo bloo I'm a fucking homo. That's all I heard. Hey, my piss smells like coffee and cigarettes," he yells.

Brad just rests his forearms on the balcony railing and looks out over the city again, thinking about nothing. He's become a lot more adept at noticing silence over the years, so once that radar pings, he wanders back inside and hopes Ray hasn't drowned himself in his own toilet. The only light that's on is the hallway light, which leaks past the open door of the bedroom. Brad follows it and sees Ray standing by the dresser. He has his shirt off. The pants are gone, too. For some reason he's wearing his shoulder holster, sans the gun.

"I swear to god, you're like a fucking retarded baby," Brad tells him, but he's a bit too drunk and it's a bit too late to force some venom into his words. "What are you doing? Take that off."

"Ooh. Brad, your seduction technique needs some work," Ray says in a low voice. He turns his head coyly and bats his lashes before turning around to sashay toward the bed, limp wristed and hips swinging. Brad just leans back against the doorframe and watches until Ray sits down on the edge of the mattress and holds his arms out.

"Retarded baby," Brad repeats.

He walks over and kneels down to wrestle the holster off. Ray grins blissfully and flops onto his back. He squints, but doesn't say anything. Brad can see the clear cut of his cheekbones and chin and stares at that for a bit.

"What?" Brad finally asks after almost a full minute. He must be drunker than he thought.

"What? Man." Ray shakes his head. Dark hair spreads over the pillowcase. "Man. Sometimes I'm kind of gay for you. But you can't blame me, right? You have all these muscles everywhere and stuff, and your face is fucking amazing."

He reaches out and runs his hand down Brad's face in an ungainly gesture. His fingers catch on Brad's lower lip for a brief moment. Then he rolls over and passes out with his arm hanging over the bed.

For the first time that he can remember, Brad is speechless. He doesn't have time to dwell on it though, because it turns out that he was mistaken about the 'passing out' part. Ray is suddenly rolling back over and sitting up. He stares at Brad with a vacant expression.

"Ray," Brad states slowly, because he doesn't know what he's dealing with here. It could just be the zone-out that comes right before some massive vomiting, or it could be some shit from _The Exorcist_. Or it could be neither of those things.

"I think I'm sober enough to get it up," Ray replies pensively, "but still drunk enough to propose some blowjobs. And also still drunk enough not to mind if you punch me in the face for proposing blowjobs." He starts nodding a little, his gaze becoming sharper and more focused. "Yeah. _Yeah_." He nods more determinedly. "Let's get some blowjobs up in here, man."

Brad wants to punch him in the face. He almost does, in fact -- he's punched him before in the past, and he'll punch him again in the future, but for some reason, right now he can't. Ray's proposed blowjobs about a million times. Brad's told him to shut up and go fuck himself about a million times.

Weird how this is the time he instinctively considers it.

For most of Brad's life, he's been meticulous about decision-making and what he does in general. It's just part of his personality to delineate everything so that there are no unexpected results. People call him the Iceman partly because nothing surprises him, but they just don't fucking understand that that's the whole point.

The only exception to this has been Ray. Partnering up with Ray. _Staying_ partners with Ray. Not throttling him on a daily basis. Ray is a twiggy motherfucker, all dark hair and dark eyes, always mouthing off to people just because he has friends who can jump in and save his ass. He's exactly the kind of person Brad hates. Most of the time, anyway.

Brad suddenly realizes that he hasn't responded in a while. Ray hasn't said anything either, but he's staring at Brad, as serious as Brad's ever seen him. His mouth is slightly open, hair mussed up, eyes half-lidded and reflecting the hallway light. His thighs are small but lean; Brad briefly wonders how they'd feel under his hands, how far around he'd be able to wrap his fingers. Whether or not Ray would put up a fight if Brad tried to pin him down.

"Sleep now, blowjobs later," Brad finally says. His voice is rough and too loud, like he hasn't spoken in hours.

"You considered it," Ray accuses with a crooked smile. "You big fucking homo."

Brad's knees are starting to ache. He shifts up, says, "Only for you, you cocksucker." When he shoves Ray's shoulder, Ray honest-to-god giggles and rolls obediently onto his back. He yells something about blankets as Brad walks away, but the words don't really process completely.

Instead, Brad walks back out onto the balcony. The sounds of traffic are still audible but slightly muted; everything feels compressed, like the air is pushing in against Brad's ears. He's way too aware of the smell of old cigarettes, the iron railing pressing cold against his forearms, Ray sleeping on his stomach in the next room over. An unfamiliar feeling has settled low in Brad's belly. He doesn't know what to do with it.

Eventually he'll go inside and crash on the couch, and he'll wake up tomorrow and do all the responsible shit he didn't do tonight, like picking up his car, and filling out the paperwork still lying on his desk with Fick's post-it note attached, and maybe making sure Ray didn't choke on any puke. But for now, he leans against the railing, closes his eyes, and listens to the soft buzz of cars and the silence from within the apartment.


End file.
